Via Buster Olney, new pitching coach Larry Rothschild is expected to fly down to Maryland to visit with A.J. Burnett in the coming weeks. A.J. called Rothschild as soon as he was hired, and the two are expected to talk about mechanics and whatnot at the upcoming pow-wow. I’m sure the cynics among us will say this should have happened weeks ago, but these guys can’t focus on baseball all year long. It’s 162 games plus Spring Training plus the playoffs, and everyone needs time to unwind and clear their head.
Archives for 2011
It’s official: Yankees sign Pedro Feliciano
The Yankees have officially signed left-handed reliever Pedro Feliciano to a two-year contract worth $8M. The deal also includes a club option for 2013. The two sides agreed to the deal in the middle of December, but the holidays got in the way of the physical and stuff. Feliciano presumably steps in as the team’s late-inning lefty reliever since he’s the “proven veteran,” pushing Boone Logan into the middle innings.
Our 2011 Draft Order Tracker and Depth Chart pages have been updated.
The RAB Radio Show: January 3, 2011
After some time off, the RAB Radio Show returns with some storylines to start 2011. We start at the most logical place: Andy Pettitte. We should hear something this week, and if he returns we’ll have Andy Pettitte Day on the show.
If Pettitte does not return, the Yankees will have a few options. Mike and I talk about the idea of finding a reliever now, to help shore up the bullpen, while they wait for the right starter to become available. Then we talk about which reliever we’d prefer, Soria or Soriano.
Finally, do any of the youngsters have a chance at breaking camp in the rotation? If you’re wondering about my answer, I repeat it a half-dozen times.
Podcast run time 21:53
Here’s how you can listen to podcast:
- Download the RAB Radio Show by right clicking on that link and choosing Save As.
- Listen in your browser by left clicking the above link or using the embedded player below.
- Subscribe in iTunes. If you want to rate us that would be great. If you leave a nice review I’ll buy you a beer at a meet-up.
Intro music: “Smile” by Farmer’s Boulevard used under a Creative Commons license
Yanks anticipating the end of Andy
As the Hot Stove League stumbles on, the Yankees are still waiting for the best remaining free agent pitcher to determine his future. Andy Pettitte has waited for over two months to announce his intentions for the 2011 season, but the Yankees believe an official announcement will come this week, Wallace Matthews reports. Unfortunately, says Bob Klapisch, “everything” points toward Andy’s retiring this winter.
With Pettitte’s decision nigh, Brian Cashman and Co. will have to shift their focus to other targets. Despite earlier reports that the Yanks were moving forward under the assumption that Pettitte would not be back, one club official told ESPN New York that the team is still waiting to hear from the 38-year-old lefty before setting their sights on someone else. “Starter, reliever, a bat, it depends on what’s out there,” the nameless source said. ‘”But we gotta know what Andy is gonna do first.”
Without Pettitte in the fold, the Yanks are looking at Sergio Mitre and Ivan Nova as internal candidates for the fourth and fifth starter spots, but pitchers and catchers do not report for over 40 days. There are moves to be made yet. Even still, considering Pettitte’s recent injury history and age, it’s not unreasonable to think he would be good for only around 20-25 starts in 2011, and the club is well aware of Pettitte’s limitations right now.
The case for Felipe Lopez
As the Yankees continue their pursuit of quality bench help, they’ve watched as talks with the Astros about Jeff Keppinger fell apart and movement on the Jerry Hairston Jr. front crawled to a standstill. There are plenty of other bench options on the free agent market, but they all have their warts. If they didn’t, teams would be after them as starters. One player that was a bonafide big league regular as recently as 2009 has seen his stock drop considerably thanks to a down 2010 campaign, and the Yankees could be in a position to capitalize. That player: Felipe Lopez.
Lopez looked to be the bargain signing of the offseason last winter, when the Cardinals got him for just one year and $1M guaranteed in late February. Things didn’t go as planned and Lopez hit just .231/.310/.340 (.295 wOBA, .273 BABIP) in 425 plate appearances before St. Louis released him. The Red Sox grabbed him late in the season, played him in exactly four games, and then offered him arbitration as a Type-B free agent after the season (so they’ll get a supplemental first round pick when he signs elsewhere, but his new team won’t have to surrender one). Lopez and Cardinals manager Tony LaRussa apparently had a dislike for each other, which in part led to the release. This certainly isn’t the first time we’ve heard about a player and TLR not seeing eye-to-eye, but I digress.
Obviously, any team that signs Lopez is going to do so hoping that his poor 2010 season was the result of playing in an uncomfortable environment rather than a decline in skills. From 2006 through 2009, a period in which he accumulated just short of 2,600 plate appearances (so small sample size warnings do not apply), Lopez hit .278/.349/.387 (.327 wOBA, .324 BABIP). If you look at just 2008 and 2009 (over 1,200 plate appearances and Lopez’s age 28 and 29 seasons), he hit .298/.366/.409 (.340 wOBA, .345 BABIP). Unlike Keppinger and Hairston, who are right-handed hitters, Lopez is a switch-hitter and he doesn’t have much of a platoon split: career .325 wOBA against righties, .318 against lefties. While he doesn’t offer much power (just a .129 ISO for his career), it’s obvious he can hit for at least a respectable average and draw enough walks (above average 10.24 BB% over the last two years) to yield quality on-base percentages.
When it comes to baseball skills that don’t involve a bat, Lopez is adequate at best. He has extensive experience at all three non-first base infield spots, though he’s awful at short according to UZR per 150 defensive games (-10.7 career) while being no better than average at second (-1.0) and third (+0.7). Lopez even has some experience in the corner outfield spots, but we’re talking about 109 career innings total. It’s not enough to think he could fill in there regularly. Once upon a time he was a baserunning threat, swiping 68 bases in 89 tries (76.4%) in the 2006 and 2007 seasons, but he’s tailed off since then (just 22 steals in 38 tries since, an unacceptable 57.9% success rate). Baseball Prospectus’ baserunning stats have Lopez at just about average in non-stolen base baserunning situations (going first-to-third, scoring from second on a single, etc.) over the last two seasons, but that would be an upgrade for the Yankees based on recent years.
Lopez’s career arc compared very favorably to Juan Uribe’s until this past season, and the latter’s name popped up as a potential bench target for the Yankees a few times this offseason. Uribe landed a three-year contract worth $21M from the Dodgers, but Lopez will get nothing close to that. He settled for that one-year, $1M deal in 2010 coming off a pretty damn good year in 2009, so what could he possibly expect this time around after the year he had? I mean, at best he’d get that same 1/1 deal again, which is nothing at all. The problem will likely be playing time more than anything. Lopez needs to rebuild his value so that he can land a nice contract next offseason, and he won’t be able to do that sitting on the Yankees bench. Maybe they can work something out, maybe they can’t, but either way Lopez is one available piece that could make sense for the Yanks in a reserve role, where he could take the place of Eduamiro Penunez.
Fan Confidence Poll: January 3rd, 2011
Season Record: 95-67 (859 RS, 693 RA, 98-64 Pythag. record), finished one game back in AL East, won Wild Card, lost in ALCS
Top stories from last week:
- The last seven days were extremely slow on the news front because of the holidays, but Joakim Soria dominated headlines by saying he’d be willing to waive his no-trade clause to join the Yankees.
- Trade talks with the Astros about utility infielder Jeff Keppinger went nowhere.
- Bartolo Colon claimed that the Yankees are interested in signing him.
- Team president Randy Levine backed Brian Cashman’s offseason strategy.
Please take a second to answer the poll below and give us an idea of how confident you are in the team. You can view the Fan Confidence Graph anytime via the nav bar above, or by clicking here. Thanks in advance for voting.
The Obligatory Grady Sizemore Post
It’s amazing how much can change in two years. Grady Sizemore was a legitimate MVP candidate as recently as 2008, just as he was in 2007 and 2006, but now the Indians would “love to trade” him according to Nick Cafardo. That’s what injuries can do to a player’s value.
Sizemore, still just 28 these days, was hampered by synovitis in his left (throwing) elbow all season long back in 2009, and was eventually shut down so he could have surgery to repair the condition in early September. The elbow gave him no trouble in 2010, but his left knee did. Sizemore originally injured the joint sliding into a base in April, and he then re-injured it on another slide against the Orioles on May 16th. He wouldn’t play again the rest of the season. Sizemore had microfracture surgery in early June, and the six-to-nine month recovery period has him in line to start Spring Training on time.
Over those last two injury plagued seasons, Sizemore hit just .239/.328/.410 (.324 wOBA) with a -6.0 UZR/150 (SSS), a far cry from his 2006 through 2008 peak. During those three years he hit .279/.380/.499 (.382 wOBA) with a total of 85 homers and 93 steals, adding on a studly +7.5 UZR/150 in center. Sizemore’s 20.1 fWAR during those years was the fourth most in baseball, behind only Albert Pujols, Chase Utley, and David Wright. He was a bonafide superstar, one of the game’s absolute best, and he was still in his mid-20’s.
For the sake of completeness, we have to acknowledge Sizemore’s warts as well. He’s just a career .311 wOBA hitter against lefties (.386 vs. RHP), and even during that absurd three-year peak he only had a .333 wOBA vs. southpaws. The need for a right-handed hitting reserve outfielder would only increase. Sizemore can also strikeout with the best of them, going down on strike three in 22.4% of his career at-bats. Again, looking at just the three year peak, he still had a 22.8% strikeout rate. And then there’s all those recent injuries, of course.
So, if Sizemore was that good when he was healthy, why would the Tribe want to move him? First thing that jumped to my mind was cost, but Sizemore isn’t that expensive. He’s their second highest paid player (behind Travis Hafner, yikes), but is still owed just $7.5M in 2011 before a $9M club option ($500,000 buyout) for 2012 comes into play. For a rebuilding team, that might be too much. Another possibility is that they aren’t confident in his health going forward, and want to move him before his value drops even more. A third possibility could simply be that he’s one of their most tradeable commodities, and they feel an infusion of young players would be better going forward than even a healthy Sizemore.
The Yankees come into play for no other reason than pure speculation, nothing has connected them to Sizemore this offseason at all. In fact, they passed on pursuing Carl Crawford and Jayson Werth because they’re comfortable with their outfield alignment. Hard to blame them, really. A trade for Sizemore would be similar to the Nick Swisher trade in that the Yanks would be buying low, but the major difference is why they’d be buying low. Swish was healthy with the White Sox, he was just unlucky when it came to balls in play. Sizemore’s stock is down because he’s hurt, it’s not like we’re just waiting for a BABIP rebound here. That’s quite a problem, because it’s a lot tougher to predict performance going forward when a guy has 140 plate appearances in the last 15 months.
The Indians are apparently searching for pitching, pitching, and more pitching these days, something the Yankees can spare at the minor league level. Cleveland’s outfield is pretty full (nine outfielders on their 40-man roster, including Grady), so I’m not sure if they’d even want Gardner in a potential trade. They do need a third baseman, I know that much, so maybe Brandon Laird has some value to them. They’re not going to give Sizemore away just because, he’s far too young and talent to write-off. New-ish GM Chris Antonetti will market Grady as the guy he was from ’06-’08, not the injured mess he’s been since. Whether or not a deal can be struck is not for me to worry about, that’s up to the guys making the big bucks.
Without being privy to his medical information, I’m inclined to say “pass” on Sizemore, which is tough to say because I love the guy as a player. He’s the very definition of a five-tool talent when healthy, a lefty power bat that would fit right in with Yankee Stadium and be an upgrade over all three regular outfielders. The Yanks have been preaching patience all offseason, and this is where they should exercise it. Let Sizemore prove he’s healthy and productive on Cleveland’s dime, then act accordingly if there’s a fit. The potential for zero or minimal return is just too high for me right now, especially when you consider how much it’ll probably take to acquire him. I suspect we’ll see the Indians hold on to their once franchise player through the offseason, hope he stays healthy and performs like he’s capable of in the first few months of 2011, then look to trade him at the deadline when his stock is higher. That’s when the Yankee should kick the tires, no sense in assuming the risk now.